Precarious
by snowandstarlight
Summary: Sequel to "Insatiable". The newest Guardians return to their (relatively) normal high school lives after completing the task assigned to them by the elders of Candracar. But is the threat really gone?
1. Chapter One: Isobel

I'm back! I can't promise weekly updates at the moment; the rest of this month is going to be pretty busy for me. But I'll be writing whenever I can.

* * *

"Since you didn't bother to set me, this is your own fault," a nasally voice said right in her ear. "But you're going to be late for school."

Isobel shot up in her bed, blankets falling around her waist. Her heart was pounding—that last part of her dream had almost seemed real, like there was actually someone talking next to her head.

She glanced at the clock on her bedside table and her rapid heartbeat almost came to a complete stop. It was 7:13 and she had less than a half hour to get up and get to school. How had her mom not woken her up? How had—

"I told you," the voice said smugly.

Isobel jumped backwards, nearly falling off her bed.

"I'll make this easy for you," the voice said in a tone that made Isobel think that its source was rolling her eyes. "I'm the one talking. Me, right here on the table."

Very slowly, she crawled forward across her mattress until she was only inches away from the little white box. Odd how she had never noticed the two round speakers on either side of the display looked like eyes. "My alarm clock?"

The clock gave a long-suffering sort of sigh. "If you must. I prefer Nancy."

This could not possibly be real. "Nancy," Isobel said flatly. "My talking alarm clock wants to be called Nancy."

"Isobel!"

This voice came from the doorway and was much more familiar. Isobel turned to see her mother, who was still in pajamas and looked very frazzled. "I'm so sorry, I just woke up," she said. "You need to get dressed right away!"

Isobel took another look at the alarm clock and then climbed out of bed. "Right," she said. "I'll be quick."

"You'll have to be."

Isobel jumped again but her mother had no reaction to the disembodied voice. "She can't hear me," the clock said. "Only you."

Oh good, she really was delusional. "I'll be right down, Mom," she promised, ushering her mom out of the room. Isobel turned around and slid down the door to bury her face in her knees. Okay, so her alarm clock was talking to her. It wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened in her life lately.

Isobel lifted her head, thinking of the Heart. In a moment the crystal was floating above her outstretched palm. It was clear now, but at other times it would flare with the light that represented her magic.

Magic that she apparently did have, despite her earlier misgivings. Jon had appeared on her street a few days after New Years with a book about the Keepers of the Heart who had come before her. The book hadn't been very specific about what her powers could do—it was mostly described as pure energy but sometimes sounded like lightning. Apparently one of those former Keepers had even killed with it. Isobel shuddered at the thought.

Still, she hadn't managed to actually use any of these supposed powers yet. Until now. If her alarm clock was talking to her, that had to have something to do with her magic. Right?

* * *

Isobel found Jon right before lunch. He was busy filling his bag with books from his locker and didn't look up until she was right next to him.

"Jon," she said without preamble, "my cell phone is talking to me." That had started in the car on the way over. Apparently Nancy wasn't the only object that had suddenly developed a personality. 'Kristen' had informed her gently that checking her phone at a red light still technically counted as texting and driving (which she would never _really_ do, obviously. She wasn't stupid. What did cell phones know about it anyway?)

He blinked at her. "Are they not supposed to do that?"

Right. What would the guy from another world know about cell phones? But he was the only one who had any access to information about her powers. She figured it might have come up at some point. "Not like this!" She shook her phone at him.

"I really wish you would stop that," the phone said.

Isobel groaned in frustration. At least Kristen had a more pleasant voice than Nancy, although that seemed a very small favor at the moment.

Jon shut his locker and leaned back against it. "So that's not normal?"

She looked up from the phone. "You heard that?" But her mom hadn't heard the alarm clock. Then again, her mom was neither a Guardian nor a… well, whatever Jon was. He looked human enough but he _did _come from another world.

"Of course he did," Kristen said.

Well that was good to know. On the bright side, she wasn't delusional. "No," she said to Jon. "This is not at all normal."

"Is it," he lowered his voice, bending closer so that she could still hear him, "a Guardian ability?"

Isobel shrugged. "I think it's one of mine," she said. "The book didn't mention it, but it's kind of old." Someone writing on vellum with a quill definitely didn't have electricity at all, let alone a cell phone.

The bell rang and the hallway flooded with motion. Lockers slammed all along the wall and there was a mass exodus towards the double doors at the end of the hall.

Isobel slipped her phone into the top pocket of her backpack and the two of them followed the crowd. The other girls would save her a seat, and Jon was usually welcome with the soccer team. He had taken a liking to the sport and even though he had missed the season of his one and only year in high school, he played pick up games with them frequently.

She wondered if they played something similar in his world. Clearly he did something athletic. Isobel snuck a glance at the boy next to her. He was tall and broad-shouldered, the sleeves of his maroon sweater pushed up to reveal muscled forearms. Yes, he definitely did some form of physical activity.

When she looked up again her eyes met his. Isobel turned away quickly, her face flushing. "Um," she said, trying to think of some way to distract him. Her eyes landed on the poster for the upcoming basketball game, the last one before finals. "So are you going to come to the game?"

He shrugged. "I might."

Isobel wasn't sure if he had seen any basketball. It was different from soccer, but it was fast-paced and fun to watch. "You should," she said. "Our team's good this year and the games are usually pretty exciting."

"Are you going?" he asked as the reached the cafeteria.

She gave him an odd look. "Of course," she said. "Me and Marlie cheer, remember? We go to every game."

He was already scanning the room for his usual table. "Right," he said, sounding distracted.

"See you later." She left him to his searching and found her own table easily. Marlie was telling a story to an eagerly attentive Cara and Anna had her head bent over a notebook as took bites from a turkey sandwich.

Isobel sat down, dumping her backpack on the chair next to her. "Guys, something happened."

Marlie broke off her story, turning towards Isobel with wide eyes. "Are those creepy guys back?"

"No, nothing bad," Isobel said. At least, in the grand scheme of things. She fished her phone out of her backpack. "I think I finally have a power. But it's weird."

She put the phone down in front of her. "Alright, Kristen."

"Who's—?"

Before Cara could finish her question, the phone spoke up, the screen lighting with the cadence of her words. "Hello, Guardians."

"Did your phone just say hello?" Grace asked. She had just gotten to lunch and she stood at the end of the table, hugging a stack of books to her chest. Her eyes were wide.

"I did," the phone said.

There was a long moment of silence as everyone blinked down at the suddenly verbose little rectangle.

Cara picked it up, turning it over in her hand as if the answer to this was written somewhere on its surface. "Is it just your phone?"

"I think it's anything electronic," Isobel said. She pushed back her chair and let her chin rest on her folded arms. "My alarm clock talks too. I haven't tried anything else."

Cara put the phone back down. "It's… kind of useless, isn't it?"

And there was the issue. Isobel finally had a power, finally wasn't just a pair of wings and a skimpy outfit, and it was completely useless. Unless she could somehow convince nearby electronics to defend her from an attacker, there was nothing she could do with this ability.

"Who are you calling—?" Isobel cut off the phone's tirade by tucking it back into her backpack. She pulled out her own lunch and started picking apart the soft bread of her peanut butter and banana sandwich.

There had to be something else that she could do.

* * *

"I'm home!" she called as the garage door shut behind her. Usually at this time her mom was on the couch watching her favorite soap opera, but today both the kitchen and family room were empty.

Isobel dumped her backpack on the kitchen island and went searching for her family. There was no one on the first floor at all, which left upstairs. She found her mom in her parents' room, shrugging on her coat.

"Oh hello sweetheart," she said. "We're leaving now for parent-teacher conferences."

This answered Isobel's unspoken question. Usually her parents would go to the later session since her dad would be at work, but apparently he wasn't today.

She followed them back downstairs, taking a seat at the counter while her mom went through her purse.

"We'll be back in two hours or so," she said distractedly. "And we'll pick up something for dinner on the way home." Having found whatever she had been searching for, she zipped up the bag and planted a kiss on her daughter's head.

Isobel didn't move from the counter until the garage door shut behind her parents. She was alone in the house now—Matt was at basketball practice and he wouldn't be home until after her parents.

She slid off her seat and padded over to the refrigerator. Her sweet tooth had come from both of her parents and their house was constantly stocked with cookies of some kind. Their current favorites were little black and white cookies that tasted better cold.

Isobel contemplated the box for a long moment, remembering the pinch of her cheer skirt at their last game. With a sigh, she shut the door hard.

"Ouch!" the fridge protested in a deep male voice.

This was going to get old fast.

She took a seat again, kicking at the wood of her chair. Keeper of the Heart was quite a title for someone who could do nothing but talk to appliances.

The fact that she was alone occurred to Isobel for a second time. Maybe this was the time to figure out what else she could do.

Ten minutes later, she stood in the furnace room in the basement. It was the only place in the house that she could think of where any potential damage she did would go unnoticed, as it was mostly used to store random items like old pieces of luggage and the Christmas decorations that had recently been packed away.

All she had to do was avoid destroying the furnace.

Maybe it was the fact that she had been using her powers, in some capacity, all day, but Isobel could feel the magic jumping beneath her skin. It hardly took any concentration to make the crystal appear in the palm of her hand and to transform into her alternate self—taller and thinner and with the appearance, at least, of a confidence that her "normal" self lacked.

Isobel grinned down at the toes of her purple boots, which looked very out of place against the concrete floor.

Her life was kind of hard to believe at times.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and reached for the magic that she felt inside her. She had seen it in her very blood—although that particular memory was not a pleasant one—and all she had to do now was push it out somehow.

But she didn't have an element, like her friends did. It was perfectly obvious what it meant to have power over fire or water. So where did that leave her?

She pictured the light that surrounded her when she transformed. It was fuchsia—vivid, definitely, but not very informative about what exactly her power was.

The answer came to her quickly. _Energy_. Beneath it all, beneath fire and water and wind and earth, there was energy. And that was how she brought them all together. That was how she could talk to her phone and her alarm clock, which relied on energy to function.

Her palms were growing warm, like she was holding them over a lit candle. She hadn't realized that her hands were in fists, and she uncurled her fingers.

The power that had been building up in her hands was released with such sudden force that it flung her into the shelf behind her. Isobel's eyes flew open and she rubbed the back of her head where it had hit one of the supports. There, right in the middle of the floor, was a scorch mark.

She scrambled to her feet. The mark had definitely been made by her—the tendrils of smoke that rose from its edges were distinctly pink.

Well, she would definitely have to find some way to hide that before her parents came home. Isobel clasped her hands around the Heart, feeling the magic leave her. Then she got to work, shifting furniture as innocuously as possible until the scorching was hidden.

Still, she couldn't help but smile.

* * *

As always, thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear any comments you have!


	2. Chapter Two: Cara

There were some Saturdays that Cara found herself full of productivity.

This was not one of them.

It wasn't that she didn't have a lot to do—actually, she had tons. Midterms were coming up and there were notes to compile and study guides to make in addition to all of her regular homework. And while she usually responded well to pressure, today she was… distracted.

It had been exactly ten days since New Years. More accurately, it had been ten days since her first "date" with Danny. Five of those had been school days, and his family had gone away for the first weekend of January. Which meant that this was the first weekend that they could potentially go out again.

The only thing was, she hadn't heard from him.

New Years had been really great, or at least she thought so. He had gotten her soda when she told him that she didn't drink and told her she looked nice and kept a hand at her back when they walked around the room. And at midnight…

Cara put down her pencil to press her hands to her warming cheeks. It hadn't been her first ever kiss, but there hadn't been all that many before it. And having mostly spent New Years with her family before this year, it was the first time she had taken part in this particular tradition. In some ways it had been everything she imagined it would be, in her most frivolous moments.

The question was, what came next?

They had talked a little bit while he had been away skiing with his family. Stupid things, trading messages about what they were doing and what they were looking forward to about their last few months of high school. And she had seen him briefly at school, of course. They didn't have any classes together but when she passed his table at lunch he gave her a small, slightly sheepish smile. That was all she needed during the school day.

But then it came to the weekend, when theoretically he could make some sort of effort to see her, and there was nothing. And while she really shouldn't let it bother her, she couldn't help it. Her phone lay a few inches away from her textbook, silent and dark. She had the ring on but she still glanced up every few minutes to check, as if she somehow could have missed a message during her half-hearted studying.

With a sigh, she looked back at her history book. Government, really—they had finished the basics of history in previous years and she had moved on to studying the law and the constitution mainly because she liked the teacher and had some vague idea that she would like to go into politics someday, in a behind-the-scenes sort of way. Lectures were interesting but the book itself was horribly dry.

Her head shot up as her phone dinged. She was reaching for it before she could even read the screen to see who it was from. It wasn't a text, she realized immediately, it was a call. Which, of course, made it very unlikely that it was him. High school boys as a rule did not call girls. At least, not until they were already dating.

It was Marlie. Feeling only slightly disappointed, Cara slid her finger across the screen to answer the call.

"Hey!" Marlie chirped at the other end of the line. "What's up?"

Cara let her eyes travel across the sad sight that was her desk at the moment. She didn't have to feign a groan. "Homework," she said. "Nothing but homework."

"Well forget that," Marlie said. "You're coming to lunch with me, and I'm picking you up in a half hour."

Cara glanced at the clock on her bedside table. To her surprise, it was already 11:30. No wonder her stomach was growling. "I guess I do need to eat," she admitted.

"Obviously."

Marlie hung up without any further explanation. Cara looked at the phone for a few seconds—it was dark again, of course—and then shook her head. Well, at least now she had something to look forward to.

* * *

An hour or so later, the two girls sat by the window of a little café. It was a place they commonly frequented, although not as much since they all started driving to school instead of taking the bus from this general area. It was a warm sort of place, with burnt orange walls decorated with murals of classic sculptures and vases of flowers on each table.

Marlie was scanning the menu but put it down to look at her phone when the screen lit up. Whatever she saw there made her grin, and she quickly typed something back.

"Tom," she explained, putting her phone down again. "We're trying to decide what to do tonight. He says I owe him his choice of movie, and I shouldn't be complaining since he knows I think that guy in it is hot."

Cara rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. Well, mostly. "Can you guys just stop being so adorable? You make the rest of us feel bad." Tom liked to tease his girlfriend, but anyone who watched them together could see how happy he was to be with her. She was thrilled for her friend, of course, but sometimes it just emphasized how lackluster her own dating life was.

Marlie, whose phone had buzzed once more in the interim, sent one last quick reply before putting it back in her purse. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm all yours, I promise."

The waitress arrived to take their orders, further postponing the conversation for the moment. Once she had left, Cara launched into a fumbled explanation of her frustrations. "I just thought that he would be the one to make the first move this time," she said. "I mean, I invited him to the party on New Years. The least he could do is ask me to go get dinner or see a movie or something, right?"

Her friend twisted a piece of light brown hair around her finger. "That does seem reasonable," she agreed. "And you guys have been talking since then?"

Cara nodded. She glanced out the window beside them as Marlie considered this. Their town got very dreary this time of year—all skeletal branches and grey skies, nothing to add any color to the parking lots and strip malls that populated the majority of this area. Snow improved the view occasionally, but after a few days it turned just as grey as everything else. And by the time the holidays had passed, all anyone wanted was for spring to arrive.

Which, for high school seniors, meant things like college decisions and graduation. And of course, prom.

At the moment, she didn't particularly want to talk about any of those.

"I'll talk to Tom and see if he knows what's going on in that kid's head," Marlie offered. "But I'm sure he likes you, Cara! I saw you two on New Years."

Cara blushed. "Tom won't say anything to him, right? I mean, about me asking?"

"Not if I tell him not to."

She thought about this for a minute. "Alright," she said. Not knowing what to expect from Danny was just going to drive her crazy, and she had more important things to worry about: midterms, acceptance letters. And of course, the uncomfortable sort of premonition that the trouble they had dealt with over Christmas break would reappear any day.

Cara didn't voice any of this to Marlie. Her friend, as far as she knew, was confident that the whole thing was over and was fairly happy about that. Cara hoped she was wrong, and she didn't want to burden any of her friends with her worries. Aside from the much-awaited appearance of Isobel's powers—as ridiculous as they were—nothing suggested that their brush with alternate universes, or whatever, would be anything but a memory.

The waitress appeared with two enormous salads. Marlie had her arms resting on the table in front of her and in her haste to move them out of the way she knocked her elbow into her glass. Ice and water spilled across the wood.

"Crap!" Marlie tried to mop of some of the spill with her napkin, but it was nowhere near enough.

The waitress rushed off to get more napkins. Cara reached over to apply her own napkin to the puddle but paused halfway through the movement.

For a moment, she could have sworn that there was an image in the water. An old man with glasses—no one she had ever seen before. She looked up at the window, half expecting him to be standing there, but all she could see was a half-full parking lot and a mother strapping her toddler into a car seat some distance away.

"Cara?"

Cara jumped, jostling the table and inadvertently dripping ice water into her lap. She hurriedly put her napkin down and reached for part of the stack that Marlie now held.

The girls made quick work of the spill now that they were well supplied, and got back to their lunch. Marlie struck up a conversation about unlikely new couples in their grade and by the time they left the café, Cara had completely forgotten what she had seen.

* * *

"Hello?"

Cara let the garage door close behind her and waited for some sort of response from her seemingly empty house. They couldn't have all gone out, right? Her little brother didn't have any sort of sporting event that she knew of. Not much else would clear her house on a Saturday afternoon.

She scanned the kitchen for some sort of note indicating where they had all gone, but found nothing. Well, she was eighteen years old. It wasn't like she needed constant updates. Next year she wouldn't even really be living here anymore.

That was an uncomfortable thought, and she pushed it to the back of her mind.

Resigning herself to an afternoon of silent studying, Cara was about to leave the kitchen when the basement door swung open to reveal Ian.

Deciding that she could extend her break a little more, Cara took a seat at the counter. "Where is everyone?" she asked.

Her brother shrugged. "I don't know, I've been down there."

"Video games?"

"Hey, it's not like I get free time at school."

This was probably true. Cara had been trying not to ask her brother what college would be like—she wanted to wait until she knew where she was going before she started thinking ahead to next year. With any luck, he'd be able to give her a very good idea of what to expect for her freshman year; they would be at the same school. From what she gathered, though, there was always something going on. Whether that was school work or parties, there probably wasn't a lot of time to just lounge around doing nothing. At least, not like he could at home.

"Want some hot chocolate?" she asked him.

He sat down on the stool next to hers. "Sure."

Cara got up and went to the cabinet for the mix. The holidays were really the only time that she got to spend with Ian these days. They had been very close growing up, with only two years between them. Now he was so far away, and had even spent the last summer at school for his internship. It wasn't the reason that his school was her top choice, but it was one of the perks.

A few minutes later, she placed a steaming mug in front of him. "Marshmallows?"

She grabbed the bag from the cabinet and tossed it at him. "Lazy."

"You offered," he pointed out. He pulled the bag closer to him and dropped a few marshmallows in his mug before pushing it towards her.

Cara didn't sit down again. She had a long day of sitting at her desk in front of her anyway. Taking the bag, she added a marshmallow to her hot chocolate. The second one she started ripping to pieces.

"What's up?" her brother asked. He grinned. "Is it a _boy_?" The last word was drawn out.

This is what she got, Cara thought, for teasing him about all of his high school romances. In her defense, he hadn't exactly chosen well in his teenage years. "Shut up."

Ian took a sip of his hot chocolate. "Do I have to beat someone up?"

Cara snorted. Her brother was very smart, sure, and had other talents going for him, but despite inheriting the family height, he was a beanpole. The idea of him beating someone up was ridiculous.

"Excuse me for trying to be a good big brother."

"I'll be fine," she said. "But thank you."

They finished their hot chocolate in companionable silence. Cara rinsed the mugs out before she headed upstairs. She left her phone on silent in the kitchen.

Whatever Danny's plans were, she would worry about them later. Now she had work to do.

* * *

So I'm back! Thank you to everyone who is still reading. I think that all of the major life changes of the past few months are over, so it won't be months until the next chapter.


	3. Chapter Three: Grace

Grace studied her reflection in the mirror. It wasn't a typical date look—heavy winter coat and boots, a thick purple scarf around her neck—but Derek had said to dress warm. And she had still been able to make her hair and makeup look nice. Winter did have one thing going for it: much less humidity to make her hair an unmanageable mess.

She smiled at the thought of her boyfriend—_boyfriend_, that was such a gratifying word—and the date he had been planning all week. Sure, she was a little bit concerned that he wouldn't tell her what it was, beyond his recommended choice of clothing, but mostly she was excited. School was so much easier to take when she had something to look forward to on the weekend.

Now she just had to remind her mom that she was leaving.

Taking a deep breath in preparation, Grace left her room and wandered down the hallway towards the kitchen. Her mom was sitting at the table, wearing the reading glasses that she only seemed to take out when she had to bring her work home.

"Mom?"

She glanced up from the papers spread out in front of her. Grace was struck by how tired she looked. And then, selfishly, on the tail of that, how much worse this could go because of it.

Her mom was looking up at her expectantly. "I'm going out for a little while. With Derek? I told you on—"

"I remember." And before she went back to her work, she added, "Have a good time, sweetheart."

This was unexpected, but Grace didn't want to argue the point. She slipped out the front door, locking it carefully behind her.

* * *

As it turned out, Derek's plan was to go sledding.

He was out of the car and trudging up the hill, towing the two cheap pieces of plastic that they had gotten from a bin outside the supermarket on the way over, before Grace had managed to pull on her hat and gloves.

She had been hoping that having fire powers would somehow make it harder to get cold, but it was doing nothing to stave off the numbness in her toes. Apparently even Candracar, wherever and whatever it was, had nothing on a Northeastern winter. It wasn't snowing today, but this far from the roads, there was still plenty left to thoroughly coat the ground.

Despite his eagerness, Derek had waited for her at the top of the hill, grinning widely. "I haven't done this since I was six!" he said cheerfully.

His enthusiasm was contagious. Grace picked up one of the sleds, positioning herself next to him. "Ready?"

And together, they dove down the hill.

Icy wind whipped across her face, stinging her nose and cheeks. Her jump had the desired effect of getting her sled moving, but it also felt a little like getting punched in the stomach. Still, there was something exhilarating about this.

When they reached the bottom, Grace rolled off her sled to look up at the grey sky above. Derek jumped immediately to his feet, brushing snow from his knees.

"Do you think that's what flying feels like?"

Grace held back a laugh. Derek, like most people in her life, had no idea that she actually knew exactly what it felt like to fly. She figured that she should probably keep that one to herself for a while. He seemed like an open-minded guy, but "I have secret magical powers and a job protecting the world from evil" would send anyone running in the opposite direction. "Yeah," she said, "it probably is."

He reached out his hand to her and she let him pull her to her feet.

"We're doing that again," he said decisively. And they climbed the hill together.

* * *

Derek dropped her off a few hours later, after a few more thrilling, if slightly painful, trips down the hill.

He kissed her goodbye, just like he had on her first date. Grace smiled all the way up the front walk. And she had thought that nothing good would come out of having a job (aside from the money, of course, but even that was hard to remember during a particularly painful shift).

Still, she couldn't help but remember what else had happened after her first date. Her mom had been so angry. And the way that the flames shot up behind her…

No, this time would be different. Her mom hadn't been upset when she left—Grace had asked permission for this date in advance—and she was home long before curfew. It wasn't even dinnertime yet.

Steeling herself for whatever mood might be waiting for her, Grace let herself in. Her mom wasn't in the kitchen, and the table was bare.

"Mom?"

She took a few more steps until she heard the sound of the TV. Obviously her mom had finished her work and moved on to more traditional Saturday activities. Namely, bad TV.

The older woman looked up when her daughter entered the room. She looked far more relaxed now, in sweatpants with her hair pulled back. "How was your date?"

Grace couldn't help but smile. "Really good." She relaxed—she could always feel a fight coming, and the room didn't have that mood.

Sure enough, her mom returned her smile. "I'm glad. This boy—he's good to you?"

Grace thought of the boy who, after their last spectacular wipeout in the snow, had announced that she needed some hot chocolate and promptly drove them to the nearest coffee shop to get a large, steaming cup for her. "Yeah, he is."

"Good." She looked back at the TV, where two expensively dressed women were having a heated discussion.

On principle, Grace didn't like shows like this—all those shallow, vapid people talking about each other behind their backs. But as soon as her mom turned one on, she was drawn in. Before she could stop herself, she was shedding her coat and boots and sinking down on the couch. "What are they arguing about?"

"Well I think the one in the red dress stole the other one's meatball recipe for her cookbook."

Grace snorted. That sounded typical. And yet, she couldn't stop watching. "You don't know their names?"

Her mom shrugged. "I just started this one. And they haven't done any of those interviews yet."

After another four hours of reality TV and some takeout Chinese food, Grace retired to her room. She flopped back on her bed, content to do nothing but stare at the ceiling. It really had been a good day, hadn't it? For once, she would have something to share with her friends on Monday, other than the occasional anecdote from the lunatics who checked out at her register.

Honestly, she didn't want to wait until Monday to talk about her date. And as well as she and her mom were getting along at the moment, there were some things that she definitely didn't want to share with her.

She turned her head to glance at the clock on her bedside table. It was still early enough to call Isobel. As far as she could remember, her friend didn't have any big plans for her Saturday night. Yes, that's what she would do—call Isobel and gush about Derek. Just as soon as she worked up the motivation to sit up and reach for her phone.

Grace closed her eyes and was prepared to enjoy another few moments of laziness when her phone rang. She had no excuse not to move now so she pushed herself up and grabbed it, answering before she had even read the screen to see who was calling.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Grace."

She leaned back against her pillows. "You know, I was just about to call you." Considering how the rest of the day had gone, maybe it wasn't so surprising that the very person she wanted to talk to had called her first.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Okay, this is weird, but I know you were."

It took Grace a moment to work out what this meant. "You mean, you knew I was going to call you?"

"It's like I heard your voice in my head, saying that you were going to call me," Isobel said.

Grace considered this. "So you're saying you can read minds?"

"I don't think it's me."

Which would mean that Grace was the one with the thought projecting ability. "Telepathy," she said aloud. "That's what it's called, right?"

Isobel sighed. "It sounds crazy, I know."

"Not really," Grace replied, shifting the phone to her other ear. "I'm just starting to miss a time when it would have sounded crazy." Back before they had been, well, whatever it was that they were. Now, it was just another strange thing on a long list of much stranger ones.

"You should see if you can do it on purpose," Isobel said. She sounded brighter now that she knew Grace believed her.

Grace was beginning to think that she would believe anything, at this point. "Alright." Pressing her lips together, she thought the first thing that popped into her head. She did her best to mentally direct this towards Isobel—theoretically there was more to it than just thinking, or else the whole world would be able to read her mind. That was a horrifying idea. _Derek took me sledding today_, she thought.

"I knew I liked that guy!" Isobel said. "That sounds like fun."

Huh. So she was telepathic. Apparently, though, they were leaving that conversation for later. To be honest, that was fine with her. "It really was."

"Tell me all about it."

* * *

In the end, the conversation was put off until Monday at lunch. Isobel waited until all the girls were sitting, and the tables around them were fully involved in their own discussions, before she brought it up.

"Something might be up," she finished, after explaining what they had discovered on Saturday night.

"Because you can talk to cell phones and read Grace's mind?" Cara asked skeptically. "That just sounds like you finally being able to do something."

Isobel shot her a look. "Okay, that's not even what I said. And you're missing the point—this isn't about me. This is about how two of us, so far, are coming up with these… secondary powers."

Anna stirred her yogurt. "If our job was done, you'd think our powers would go away," she said quietly.

"Exactly," Isobel said, looking relieved that someone understood what she was getting at.

Marlie shook her head. "No way. I mean, look." She gestured at the large windows of the cafeteria. Outside, the sky was blue and even the bare branches looked a little less harsh in the sunlight. "Do you see any mysterious evil creeping around out there? And don't you think that we would have heard from, I don't know, _someone_ if there was something else we were supposed to do?"

Privately, Grace thought that Marlie was trying to convince herself of this, more because she wanted life to be normal again than because she actually believed it. Now was probably not the best time to say that though.

Apparently, the rest of her friends agreed with the latter. When no one challenged her, Marlie turned on Grace. "So, you had a story for us?"

For now, at least, they would keep going as they were. Grace was sure that the other shoe would drop eventually—it was just a matter of when.

* * *

A little bit of a short update, but I'm already working on the next one. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter Four: Marlie

This is uploaded from my phone, so excuse any formatting issues.

* * *

Today was shaping up to be a good day.

Marlie returned to her seat with a brownie on a napkin, feeling very content. Whoever had originally come up with lunchtime bake sales, with items for a quarter or two each, was a genius. Now all of the different charity groups did them, which meant that almost every day there was an opportunity to spend the loose change in your backpack on homemade baked goods for a cause.

Maybe she was easily pleased, but she couldn't ask for much more than a brownie and a post-lunch free period—which effectively extended her lunch from twenty minutes to an hour and fifteen—on a Friday afternoon.

She shared this particular free period with Anna. Jonathan had joined them today too, as he often did. Apparently, none of his lunch buddies had this free, so he fell back on them as the only other people he , Marlie wouldn't have stood for being someone's backup plan, no matter who they were, but in this case it was for the best. Someone would notice if the new kid spent all his time with a small group of girls.

"So you're coming to the game tonight, right?" Marlieasked Anna. It was the last basketball game before finals, so pretty much the last opportunity for fun until hell week was over. Besides, Anna almost always came to the games.

Anna looked up from her book. Teachers weren't allowed to assign any homework this weekend—it was supposed to be all studying, all the time—which meant that Anna was just getting a head start. Probably not a bad idea, but Marlie just didn't have the motivation for that right now. "Of course," her friend answered.

Jonathan looked up as well. It was unclear how he was getting along so well in a high school in a completely different world. Theoretically he had no basis for half of what he was learning—the rest of them had been learning the same things since elementary school, but he had no idea. Maybe he had some magic trick to help him. Or maybe he was just interested enough to put in the work. Clearly he was smart enough.

All the more reason that her plan was perfect.

"I'd like to come," he said.

"You should!" Anna said cheerfully. "We haven't really gotten to high school sports on your tour of Earth, have we?"

Jon mostly looked perplexed by this statement, but he nodded.

Look at that! Marlie ducked her head to hide a smile. She didn't even have to try. Anna, the perpetually disinterested, might actually get a boy good enough for her.

And it would all start with this manufactured "date" to the game.

He turned to Marlie. "You and Isobel… cheer?" He hesitated, like he was unsure that this was the correct word.

Right, he would have no framework for something like cheerleading either. One of the other girls must have mentioned it to him and forgotten to explain. It was a little difficult to sum up, now that she had to try. "We do," she said. "It's like—we're kind of like entertainment, for when the game isn't going on? And we cheer on the players, of course."

Okay, that probably hadn't helped. Jonathan nodded but didn't look less confused.

"You'll see," Marlie said. She opened her computer, pulling up the website for one of her favorite stores. Sometimes she had the motivation to do work during her free periods, but today was not one of those days. Online shopping just sounded so much more fun.

Jonathan returned to the textbook he had open in front of him, but Anna was still staring into space, tapping her pen absently against the page.

"Jon?" she said after a moment.

He raised his head again. Marlie stopped scrolling down a page of spring sundresses. She had no hope that it would be something to further her matchmaking—Anna was a direct person in all things _except_ her love life. That didn't mean that she wasn't curious about what her friend had to say.

Anna dropped her pen and folded her hands in her lap. "Do you know… is there something else out there? For us to do, I mean?"

And there it was again, that plummeting feeling in her gut that showed up whenever she was reminded that she might have other things to worry about besides finals and graduation and her friends' romantic prospects. She had done a good job of not thinking about any of those little hints of coming trouble since Monday. Of course, then Anna had to go and bring it up.

Jonathan, unlike Marlie, did not seem surprised by the question. "I don't know," he said.

"But you were sent back, right?" Anna pressed. "Your job here isn't over."

He shrugged. "As a precaution, I assumed. My superiors don't share their reasoning with me." He looked like he was going to say something else but then apparently thought better of it. Instead, he went back to studying.

Anna couldn't have been completely satisfied with this answer, but didn't ask anything else. Marlie continued her scrolling, staring at her screen without seeing a thing.

She hadn't considered that. They were all used to Jonathan being around by now, but Anna was right. Why would he stay, if the whole thing was over? He couldn't possibly just like high school that much. And whoever those mysterious superiors were, they would probably consider a casual interest in this world to be a waste of time. That left only one obvious reason that he would still be here.

No. She wasn't thinking about this now. Today, the last day before she had to start studying, was going to becompletely stress-free.

* * *

Hours later, Marlie drove back into the school parking lot. As usual, getting ready had taken her longer than she had planned for, and they had only a few minutes to spare. When the car stopped, she and Isobel grabbed their team-issued duffel bags from the back seat and walked quickly towards the school.

Luckily, their team wasn't known for punctuality. Only about half of the girls had gathered in the locker room when they arrived. Marlie dumped her bag on one of the long benches and started peeling off the layers that covered her uniform.

She had to visit the boy's locker room—empty of course—only once, to track down a missing mat that had somehow ended up in there. The girls kept their lockerroom much cleaner, and smelling like soap and deodorant instead of sweaty socks. To this, the cheerleaders added scented lotion and a heavy mist of hairspray.

Isobel was part of the group standing in the tiled area of the room, in front of the long row of mirrors, spraying down the fine hairs that threatened to come loose along her hairline. Marlie stepped up next to her, accepting the can of hairspray and doing the same. This was her favorite of the different ways that they wore their hair for games: top pulled back, bottom loose. And of course, a large bow in royal blue and white.

It was hard to get warm at first, even now that they were inside. Switching sweatpants for bare legs and furry boots for sneakers had that effect. The uniform's long sleeves were miserable for those first few football games, when it was still summer, but Marlie was happy for them now. The small room warmed up quickly as the rest of their team arrived and started to spread out on every available bit of carpet to stretch.

"Hey, Is," Marlie said, as something occurred to her. "Is Grace coming to the game tonight?"

Her friend had her forehead pressed to her knee, hair spilling over her extended leg, but at this she looked up. "No, I don't think so. Her mom wanted her to stay in and study."

Grace's mom chose to crack down on her daughter at what seemed like random intervals. Still, this worked out better for Marlie's plans, so she couldn't complain. "And Cara is having dinner with her family, before her brother goes back to school."

Isobel switched her legs to stretch the opposite one. "Anna's coming though, right?" she asked, her words slightly muffled.

"Hmm," Marlie confirmed. "And Jonathan too."

Apparently finished stretching for now, Isobel pulled her knees up to her chest. "Oh good, he decided to. I told him that he'd like basketball."

As it turned out, Isobel had not been nearly as stubborn about their new friend as Marlie had predicted. Her grudge had pretty much vanished. But then, he had been a significant part of the effort to come rescue her. That had to go a long way in making her trust him.

Their coach picked that moment to gather them in, giving her usual pre-game pep talk. As a former cheerleader herself, she had a lot of leftover pep. She could be tough on them, especially at practices after they had done poorly at the last game (or spent most of the time talking), but she was generally fair.

They broke on a "Go, Crusaders!" It was a fairly predictable mascot for a Catholic school—about a dozen others in the area had some variation on the same—butMarlie had always liked the image of the silver knight emblazoned on the wall behind the benches and in the center of the floor.

The girls took their positions behind the basket, where there was enough space for them to stand in two rows. It was necessary to pay close attention to the game—when your arms were folded behind your back, there wasn't much time to react to a ball heading straight for your stomach—but they were far enough from the line to satisfy the refs and they had room to move.

Marlie glanced up into the stands, sorting through parents and younger siblings to find people her own age. There, sitting in the general student area but not with any particular group, were Jonathan and Anna. Anna wasn't much for school spirit, but some overzealous fan had evidently grabbed her and painted a bright blue line on each cheek. She was leaning towards the boy next to her and pointing, explaining something or other about the event and the game that was about to begin.

Grinning, Marlie turned back to the court as the ref tossed the ball into the air.

* * *

It was a good game. Marlie shouted herself hoarse as the lead switched back and forth, one team pulling away and then the other.

In the end, it came down to a three pointer shot by one of their team's best seniors. Marlie jumped wildly at the buzzer as the team rushed onto the court. Several of the girls did a series of celebratory flips down the floor, carefully avoiding the players.

When they finally got back to the locker room, she was still just as full of energy. There was no way she could just go home now—a night that preceded a straight week of studying had to last a little longer. This town didn't have too many late night options, but there was one that she could think of.

Grabbing her phone, she sent a quick text to Anna and another to Tom, who had also been in the student section. She pulled Isobel aside. "Hey, are you hungry?"

Isobel shrugged. "Kind of, I guess. Diner?"

Oh, it would be so nice to go to college and have an option besides pancakes at 10pm. "Yeah, let's go."

Anna and Jonathan were already there when Marlieand Isobel got to the diner. They had set up a table that ran almost the length of one of the smaller rooms. It would get crowded here closer to midnight, but right now it was in between dinner and late night, leaving plenty of space for whoever decided to join them.

Marlie hung back for a moment, watching the two of them. Anna was playing a game on her phone and the boy across from her was examining the plastic coated menu. Not particularly romantic.

Figuring that this was a moment that she could freely interrupt, she took the seat next to Anna. "So what did you think?"

The question was aimed at Jonathan, who looked up. "Very exciting," he said. And looking at Isobel, he added, "Nice flips."

The girl at his right rolled her eyes and opened her mouth, presumably to start some sort of tirade in defense of cheerleading.

"No, I mean it," he said, before she could start. "That takes strength."

Isobel closed her mouth. "Oh," she said, and then she smiled slightly. "Thanks."

The large table turned out to be a good idea. Over the next fifteen minutes, their group expanded. First Tom andthe friends he had been at the game with, then Steph and her boyfriend, a few more of their friends tagging along behind. Marlie had always been good at organizing things like this.

As much as she complained about this town, she was going to miss this place a little bit. And these people? She would miss them a lot.

* * *

Still a little slow, I know. I wanted to get them all back into normalcy before they get thrown into the craziness. The action will be back next chapter :) thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter Five: Anna

So I had some extra free time this week, and got a lot of writing in! There's a little continuation of the last chapter (I'm having high school nostalgia, which I never thought would happen) and then the plot finally makes its appearance.

Quick note: just in case there is any confusion, it is currently mid-January. They're actually taking midterms, but I was thinking back to my most recent education (at a college with a semester system) so I wrote finals. Sorry about that.

* * *

Anna had known Marlie for a long time.

This meant that, although Marlie was being subtle for now with her match-making plans, Anna recognized the signs. It wasn't new—she tried something like this about once a semester, with the quality of the guy in question determining how hard she would push.

And as usual, she didn't have to bother. First and foremost, Anna liked to develop interest in guys on her own. She liked Jonathan, but the thought of dating him was slightly uncomfortable. He was more like a distant cousin from another country, who barely spoke English and had no concept of American culture.

Actually, that was fairly accurate, wasn't it?

Regardless of his merit as a date, he turned out to be good company. Jon had a natural understanding of sports that helped him catch on to the main idea of the game fairly quickly. She didn't mind explaining the rest to him. Anna had grown up watching basketball with her dad and uncles and could talk about it for hours with anyone who cared to listen.

As much as he understood basketball, though, the boy couldn't seem to wrap his mind around the concept of cheerleaders. Honestly, she suspected he wouldn't have taken much notice of them, except for the fact that he knew two of the girls.

It was a strange concept, if you thought about it too long. But Isobel and Marlie loved it—Marlie because she liked to dance and enjoyed the spotlight, Isobel because she wanted an excuse to get absurdly invested in basketball and football games and an outlet for her childhood gymnastics training.

Anna had grown up in a world where this was an established activity. Jon, though, had not. So when he first saw the girls come out of the locker room with their bows and short skirts and metallic poms, Anna couldn't help but laugh at the look on his face.

"They don't wear things like that in your world?" she asked him under her breath.

He looked at her incredulously. "No," he said. "They don't."

Really, he shouldn't have been so surprised. Besides seeing all sorts of modern clothing in his two months here and going to a school where the girls wore skirts every day (they were, of course, supposed to be exactly three inches above the knee, but most of them were rolled significantly shorter than that), he had spent quite a lot of time with the Guardians. Their outfits didn't provide much more coverage, even if they did have those tights. Maybe it was just different when there wasn't an army of clone men after them.

Okay, she didn't want to think about that.

Jon recovered quickly from his initial surprise, so maybe it was just the whole spectacle rather than the uniforms that had momentarily distracted him. He turned his full attention to the game. Still, when his eyes occasionally drifted back towards the cheerleaders, she reflected that it was a good thing she didn't want to date him.

She had a feeling that Jon, whether he was aware of it or not, already had his eye on someone else.

* * *

"How can they make all of this?" Diners, Anna supposed, were a pretty modern concept. Jon had no idea what to do with eight pages of food choices.

Isobel, taking pity on him, flipped his menu over. "Stick with breakfast," she advised. "Diners always make good breakfast."

Next to her, Marlie was recapping the game to Tom and Danny, as if they hadn't been there themselves. Of course, Tom would listen to anything that his girlfriend said, and he was grinning at her enthusiasm. Further down the table were mostly acquaintances of hers, not close friends, so Anna decided that there was no need to get up at the moment.

They made quite a group, crowded around the long table under the fluorescent lights, all discarded winter coats and smudged blue face paint (Anna was sure that hers wasn't much better, except that she had less of it on in the first place). The three cheerleaders at the table still had their bows in and their emblem tattoos on their cheeks. And it was probably a good thing that the room was empty, considering how loud they were.

The waiter came over to take their order, unfazed by the sight. It was pretty common around here, after all, for people to congregate where there was food after any sort of late-night event.

Isobel, remembering the jukebox in the corner, dug out a few quarters and hopped up to choose a song. Clearly curious about the machine, Jon followed.

Of course, Marlie immediately spotted this opportunity. Leaving her boyfriend and his friends to continue their conversation without her, she took Jon's empty seat and rested her chin on her folded hands, giving Anna a smug and knowing smile. "So, how's it going?"

Anna sighed. She hadn't quite decided yet whether to just pretend that she didn't notice Marlie's plotting or to tell her friend that she wasn't interested, but apparently the other girl was going to force the issue.

"You guys looked like you were having fun up there in the stands."

"Yes, because we both like sports," Anna said reasonably.

This, of course, only encouraged Marlie. "Exactly!"

Anna glanced over towards the boy in question, who was feeding quarters into the jukebox. How he was going to choose a song from an entire list of unfamiliar titles she had no idea, but she was curious to see what he would pick. "Marlie, that isn't going to happen."

"Whatever you say." And with that, Marlie went back to her spot next to Tom.

Apparently, Marlie wasn't going to be easily discouraged on this one. Either she thought that Jon's presence was an exceptionally good opportunity or that Anna was in desperate need of some love in her life. Probably both, to be honest.

She was just going to have to deal with it until Marlie got bored with the whole thing. Unless, of course, it were to become obvious that one of them was interested in someone else.

Isobel and Jon returned to the table just as a new song came on. Anna grinned at the sounds of piano and harmonica. This was one of her dad's favorites, and it always made her think of falling asleep against the window on late night drives, lulled by the music and the rough voice.

It was a popular choice all along the table. Everyone sang along with varying degrees of accuracy. Anna hadn't been the only one who grew up listening to this song, and others by the same artist, as unofficial anthems. Their resident visitor from another world, of course, didn't know any of the words. Jon got some judgmental looks for this before the others shrugged it off as a product of being the new kid and not from around here.

His choice was the next song to come on. Judging by his expression, it wasn't what he expected.

"So how did you end up picking?" Anna asked, tapping her foot along to the beat.

Jon frowned at the lyrics. "I knew a Mrs. Robinson," he said.

This made her laugh harder than it should have. In the end, she didn't stop giggling until their waiter arrived with a large stack of chocolate chip pancakes, dripping butter.

Later that night, Anna pulled up in front of an extended stay hotel. Jon had apparently walked to the game and she had offered to drive him home both because it would be mean to make him find his way back in the pitch dark and because she was curious about where he had been living. Now the mystery had been solved. Apparently his organization had plenty of American currency to allow him to pay for this place.

Jon made for the door handle, but paused. "They didn't tell me anything," he said, "but I think we will see more of him."

There was no question about who "him" was. Thinking about that cruel, cold face made her shiver, even though it was warm inside her car.

Message delivered, Jon got out. "Thank you," he said. Then he shut the door and disappeared into the darkened building.

* * *

A week later, the girls gathered at their usual lunch table to celebrate the end of their last midterm. The school provided free pizza for the occasion, for which Anna was grateful. Something about long tests made her starving, even if it was only 11am.

There was nothing like the sudden release of stress after a week of studying. Her head was full to bursting with dates and names and formulas, but now she could let it out. She didn't have to think about any of it until finals, and maybe not even then.

"I'm going to go watch TV for five hours," Marlie said. Her voice was muffled by the fact that she was using her folded arms as a pillow.

That sounded like an appropriately mindless activity, but Anna had other plans. "I'm just going to sleep." Put on pajamas, pull her covers up over her head, and catch up on all the sleep that she had missed while studying.

If any of the other girls had particular plans for this afternoon, they didn't get to voice them. Jon arrived at the head of the table, looking way too serious for someone who had a free weekend ahead of him.

It was probably just good judgment (and a strict belief in Murphy's Law), not premonition, but Anna knew exactly what he was going to say.

"I received notice from my superiors. There's another machine."

* * *

Anna got the privilege of driving, since she was the only one with a car that could fit six people. She was actually somewhat grateful for this. Paying close attention to the navigation system was a good way to keep herself distracted.

They were heading north—about three hours north, to be exact. Although Jon's new and expanded magic map didn't exactly provide addresses, it gave them a general idea where they were going. As it turned out, Isobel was familiar with the area and knew a place that they could stay, which also gave them a specific destination.

Jon had the passenger seat, since he would be navigating to the location of the machine once they got close enough. Grace, Marlie, and Cara were asleep in the backseat and Isobel, sitting directly behind Jon, was staring steadily out the window.

"So we didn't get rid of him," Anna said, stating the obvious. She knew he was alive, of course—they weren't a team of teenage assassins—but she had been hoping that they had significantly crushed his plan.

Obviously she was a bit naïve when it came to villains.

Jon studied the map. It didn't have any new information for them—besides the location of the machine, there was nothing else it could provide. "No," he said. "I guess not."

They were silent for a few minutes as Anna followed the GPS instructions, trading the wide highway they had been on for a narrower, quieter one. "And he can build more machines."

Jon made an affirmative noise, not looking up.

This had a very unpleasant implication. "Do you think there are more of them? Besides this one?"

"None that are active, or the map would show them." He considered this. "He might have more in place and waiting to be activated. Maybe there can be only one at a time."

Anna tried to contemplate some physics-compliant reason why this might be, but gave up quickly. Applying her high school level understanding of the subject to something that sucked magic out of alternate dimensions made her head spin.

She wished that she could just concentrate on this for the moment, instead of imagining all of the unfortunate possibilities. But she had always been one to carry ideas to their logical conclusion. "There's going to be a lot for us to do, then."

Jon, giving up on the map, folded into a small square and tucked it in his coat pocket. It was still funny to see him in a school uniform. It was the same dark grey slacks and maroon sweater that her male classmates had been wearing for four years now, but it seemed out of place on him. Maybe just because she knew who he really was. "Unless we find his hideout," he said. "He needs a base, somewhere he can make more of the machines. If we try to find that—"

"Then we can actually stop him," Anna finished.

Oddly enough, the idea that they could do something besides try to keep up with this guy was comforting. Satisfied by that and the fact that they had a more concrete idea of what they were dealing with this time, she turned up the radio.

She had always liked driving. Might as well enjoy it.

They reached the town where the machine was apparently located at the same time that Anna's gas tank got down to ten miles. She pulled into a gas station in the middle of the fork between Main Street and whatever number Route it was that they had just been on. There was an ancient-looking hotel across the street that made her happy they had other arrangements. Across the other way was a bank, with a tall sign displaying time and temperature in bright orange. Further down she could see some other buildings, but the town was clearly very small and not heavily populated.

The other girls stirred behind her as she climbed out of the car. She fitted the nozzle into her gas tank and listened to the conversation through the open window.

"We should go straight there," Cara said, as soon as she was fully awake. "Get that done, and then we can relax and get to wherever it is that we're sleeping."

Isobel yawned and stretched, even though she hadn't been sleeping. "My great-aunt's house," she supplied. "She travels a lot—I know she isn't home right now."

"I'm with Cara," Marlie said. "Let's get it over with."

That was the general sentiment. When Anna paid and got back in the car, Jon already had the map open again. He directed her off Main Street and down a series of increasingly bumpy dirt roads.

"We're close," Jon said as they passed a tiny parking lot that was presumably for a trailhead of some sort. "You should leave the car here."

Right. Driving up to this place would probably announce their presence a bit more loudly than they intended.

They picked their way through the woods that led up to the back of whatever house he had chosen this time. Unfortunately, it wasn't along that trail. The woods at home were scraggly at best but here the trees were packed close together, the ground coated thickly with dead leaves and unruly plants. Anna winced at the thorns that caught at her skirt and left shallow white scratches across her bare knees. It had been stupid to forget her sweatpants this morning—almost all the girls wore them under their skirts in the winter, to and from school—but then, she hadn't known that she would be going anywhere other than home after her test.

Jon stopped them as they approached a clearing. Through the trees, Anna could see the back of a very small house. It was old and rundown, made of dark wood that seemed seconds from collapsing in on itself. Their enemy clearly wasn't choosy when it came to setting up his devices.

"You should change now," he said quietly to Isobel.

She nodded and held out her hand. It was getting darker already and the Heart cast bright pink light across the shadowed tree trunks.

Anna closed her eyes as the silver wind surrounded her, teasing her hair from its braid. She smiled in spite of herself. As much as she wanted a normal life, she had missed this.

* * *

As always, comments/questions/suggestions are welcome. Thank you for reading!


	6. Chapter Six: Isobel

I know it's been a while, so thank you to everyone who is still reading! Life has been very busy this past year (in a good way) and I had to put this story on the back burner for a while. I am still writing; it just might be a little slower.

Once again, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Sometimes, Isobel thought that she had trouble reacting appropriately to situations. Right now, for example, things were pretty serious. The resurgence of their enemy and his plan that would likely destroy the world (and all those other worlds that apparently existed) was obviously a big deal. And yet, all she could think, as the heat of her power burned in and around her, was how excited she was to get a chance to actually be part of the fight this time around.

Definitely inappropriate. But she liked this version of herself, and even more now that she had powers of her own. Feeling the literal and figurative weight melt away as she transformed left her with little desire to remember her responsibilities.

Isobel pressed her forearm against her lower abdomen, feeling the prominence of her hipbones—a reassurance that she couldn't get from her actual body—and then turned to face her friends.

"So is there a plan?" Cara asked.

Isobel firmly steered her mind onto the proper track. A plan. That would be good, wouldn't it? "Okay," she said, more for herself than for the others. "Well, I'm sure it has guards around it like last time. We need to know how many, right? And knowing where they are will tell us exactly where it is."

That was actually coherent. She silently congratulated herself.

"So we should fly over there and go count them?" Marlie's tone was somewhere between serious and incredulous.

Probably not the best idea, Isobel decided. Something occurred to her and she turned to Anna. "Anna, can you hear from where we are?"

The other girl closed her eyes. Her dark hair and the ends of her skirt lifted in a breeze that touched only her. Moments later, she opened her eyes again. "It's hard to tell how many," she said. "But there are definitely at least three. And they're near the back of the house, I think."

Isobel reflected that it couldn't possibly be that hard to find them, in a house this small. Her kitchen was almost as big. Taking 'at least three' to mean 'not too many more than that', she figured that they could handle it without any extra deliberation. "Alright," she said. "Let's go."

"That was the plan?" Cara muttered under her breath.

Ignoring this, Isobel stepped forward to survey the clearing. The spot where they stood was shrouded by trees but several yards of open air lay between them and the house. Fortunately, no other buildings were visible through the woods. There would be no one to see them defying all laws of physics.

She leapt into the air, coming down lightly a few feet from the door. The others followed, and they gathered there as if awaiting further instruction.

Her instruction. Right. "Everyone ready?"

Before anyone got a chance to answer, the door slammed open. Grace, who was standing closest to it, took a startled step backwards.

It was yet another of the henchmen, blank-faced as ever. Grace recovered quickly and lobbed a handful of fire at him. He ducked, losing his balance when Jonathan came charging forward. Jon crouched just long enough for his knife to flash. With the doorman out of the way, the rest of the girls followed into the house.

"Oh good, a welcoming committee," Marlie said. Her raised hand sparkled with emerald light as she considered where best to apply it. The first of the men to come towards them became her first victim, woody tendrils snaking up through the floor to bind tightly around his legs.

Isobel breathed deeply, feeling the magic thrumming beneath her skin. Light gathered around her fingers and she threw her hands forward. The resulting ball of fuchsia cracked a hole in the floorboards and disintegrated one of the guards, clipping another in the arm and nearly knocking Anna to the ground.

She clapped a hand to her mouth. "Sorry, Anna!"

The other girl got her footing easily and grinned at her friend. "When did you learn to do that?"

Isobel smiled and shrugged. "A few weeks ago."

_Is, look out! _Grace called. It took a moment for her to realize that she heard the voice with her mind and not her ears.

She spun around to find the singed guard advancing on her, looking as angry as a member of the clone army could manage. He clearly hadn't expected her to turn around and his slight hesitation gave her a chance to strike. Her first attempt to dispatch him went wide and landed at Jon's feet instead.

Jon jumped out of the way and Isobel took a step back, trying to concentrate. Her legs were shaking like she had just run a mile. She raised her arms again, locking her elbows. This time, the light hit its mark.

Isobel didn't move until Jon came to her side. She turned her head to look up at him, deciding that he didn't seem too upset that she had almost hit him.

"So you figured it out?"

She nodded. "I should probably work on my aim."

"Probably."

Marlie came crashing between the two of them, pursued by the only guard still standing. She twisted as if to strike out at him but before she could, Cara had frozen him solid.

"Thanks," Marlie said. Then she looked around the room. "Hey, we got them!"

Cara frowned and crossed her arms over her chest but said nothing.

She wasn't the only one who felt uneasy. Isobel didn't wish that there had been more guards, but the number had been unexpectedly small.

"Ready, Is?"

Isobel gave Grace a weak smile and stepped forward, towards the machine. Just like last time, its mere presence was painful. The guards had distracted her, but now they were gone and she could feel the full force of it.

Her friends tightened their arc behind her. Deciding that it was very nice to have backup, she turned her attention to the task at hand.

The Heart knew what it had to do. As soon as she held it up, it erupted with light. It pulled from her first, taking the magic that it had gifted her and shoving it towards the device.

And like last time, that wasn't enough. Isobel closed her eyes. She was nothing but a conduit for the magic of the elements that streamed from her friends through her body and into the Heart. They burned white hot as they passed through and she bit down hard on her lip against the pain. She wasn't going to scream. She couldn't. Her legs were shaking again but this wasn't a mile—this was a marathon.

They gave out, finally, as the last of the magic left the Heart. For a moment the light behind her eyelids flared bright enough to blind her. But before she hit the floor, everything went black.

The first thing that she was aware of was the headache. It pounded steadily at the center point of her forehead, like someone was trying hard to drive a railroad spike into her skull.

She groaned and shifted, at which point she realized that she wasn't lying on the floor like she had expected. Instead she was propped up against something that was warm and, while solid, a good deal softer than wooden boards.

Her eyes fluttered open and she twisted her head just enough to see who she was on top of.

The clearly masculine chest that was serving as her pillow probably should have made it obvious. "Uh," she said intelligently, "sorry." She pushed herself up and scrambled to her feet. For a moment her vision went black and her legs threatened to wobble, but she stayed standing.

Jon stood as well, frowning at the crystal that she had managed to keep in her hand when she fell. It was glowing brightly, throwing pink light across the walls and their faces.

"Sorry guys," she said, looking between her friends. "I guess I should give this back." They were all in their school uniforms again and the neat white shirts and dark skirts seemed incongruous with the remnants of their elemental battle.

What had she done last time? The Heart had claimed all of its powers to destroy the device, so it should be simple to reverse and send them back. But for some reason, she couldn't remember much more than a glow behind her eyelids.

This was a starting point at least and she closed her eyes, trying to concentrate.

"Wait."

Her eyes fluttered open again to meet Jon's. He looked uneasy, frowning more deeply than he had been a moment earlier. "What?"

"You shouldn't—I mean what you did last time, it was… dangerous. You would be better off giving them their magic back directly from the Heart."

Right, that was what she had done. She had pulled everything the crystal had into herself. The memory of the glow and the warmth grew stronger and she had an almost overwhelming urge to ignore his advice. All of that magic, hers…

Isobel jerked her head, breaking free of that foreign little voice in her mind. What was she thinking? She didn't want anyone else's powers. She just wanted to put them back where they belonged.

Jon was still watching her, waiting for an answer.

"Okay," she said. "I'll do that." When she closed her eyes this time, she was ready for it. She forced the impulse away, willing the elements to return to their Guardians. The pull of the Heart lessened and she relaxed.

She opened her eyes to see the other girls still in their normal clothes but looking much livelier.

"That's so _weird_," Marlie complained.

Cara surveyed the room—the buckled floor boards, the scorch marks, the twisted, smoking lump of metal in the corner—and then looked back at the others. "We should go."

No one had any objection to this, so they headed back to Anna's car. Isobel sat in the middle of the back seat, leaning forward between Anna and Jon to give directions. "Turn left here," she said, as they reached the barely-visible turnoff that led to her aunt's house. The main road was paved and well-kept, but this one was just hard packed dirt scattered with potholes.

"Why does anyone have a house here?" Marlie wanted to know.

It was true that the place didn't look all that impressive so far. It was almost dark now and the trees curved tightly over the road to block out the last of the light. The houses here were set back into the woods and most were in some state of disrepair. But this wasn't a collection of people who just wanted to live in the middle of nowhere. "You'll see," Isobel said.

For once, she had perfect timing. They reached the bottom of the hill just as the sun was sinking behind the trees on the other side of the lake, painting its snowy surface with red and gold.

Biting back a smug grin (she could see her friends' faces out of the corner of her eye), Isobel pointed to the wooden cabin off to their left. "That's the one. Just pull up behind it, there's room."

"This place has heat, right?"

Technically it did. Isobel just wasn't sure she knew how to work it. But they didn't have to know that. "Well," she said cheerfully, "if it doesn't, you can just make us a fire."

Grace snorted at this but followed her friends inside.

The cabin wasn't especially big, so Isobel's tour took about five minutes. "There's two rooms down here and another bed up in the loft. The bathroom is in between the bedrooms." Everything else was fairly self-explanatory, and she gestured awkwardly at the kitchen before concluding, "And yeah that's pretty much it."

Cara looked between the two closed doors. "So where is everyone sleeping?"

"You guys can pick between the rooms, and I can take the loft." She turned to Jon. "I promise, the couch is actually more comfortable. I'll get you a blanket."

They spent the rest of the night gathered in the living room. The heat did, in fact, work without too much trouble, but it was cold enough outside that they lit a fire too. It was nice, sitting there around the fireplace and flipping through the ten available channels on the TV.

After some debate, they landed on an old football movie. Anna took the remote and put it out of reach before anyone could complain and they all fell silent.

Isobel settled back into the couch. Most of the time, this part of her life didn't even feel real. But she would enjoy it while she could.

It was always hard for her to sleep late, but especially when she did not have an actual wall to separate her from the uncovered east-facing window in the main room. The light poured in over the edge of the divider to wake her up almost literally at the crack of dawn.

Still, she didn't mind being an early riser. Isobel swung her feet down onto the floor and stood up carefully to avoid smacking her head on one of the low beams. From here she could just see the edge of the lake outside, where deep green pines bent towards the frozen water.

Despite the cold, it wasn't a hard decision to make.

The loft also served as a storage space for things that various members of her family had left here during the years. Isobel dug out a thick knitted sweater to pull over the sweatpants she had worn to bed and a pair of ski socks. Everything else she needed was downstairs.

It wasn't until her feet hit the ground at the bottom of the ladder that she realized she not all of her guests were still asleep. She turned to see Jon sitting up and blinking blearily at her over the back of the couch. It was the youngest that she had ever seen him look, and she bit back a smile.

"Morning," she whispered. She went to the front closet to look for boots—someone always managed to leave theirs every winter. Jon's steps were soft on the wood floor as he came up beside her.

"Where are you going?"

She looked up at him, braid swinging over the opposite shoulder. "Outside. Want to come?"

Jon glanced out the front window and shrugged. "Sure."

She was in luck—there were three pairs of boots in here. One was child sized but another just about fit her and the third looked even larger. She shoved those at Jon and stood up to pull her jacket off its hanger.

Outside was colder than she had anticipated, the icy air biting at her exposed face and ears. Still, it was worth it. She loved the snow.

Jon didn't look particularly bothered by the weather. Maybe where he was from was equally cold.

When she asked, he smiled. "We get snow all winter," he said. "But I never get tired of it."

They reached the edge of the lake. From up close, it wasn't nearly as pristine as it had seemed from far away—the snow atop the ice was covered with footprints and someone a few houses down had cleared a large rectangular rink . "Come on," Isobel said, and she stepped onto the frozen water.

Her family had come up here all the time when she and her brother were younger, but it had been years since then. At home it rarely got cold enough for a large body of water to be frozen this solidly. "The last time I did this, I was a little kid," she told Jon. It was early enough that they were the only ones out here. The snow caught the sunlight to make the whole lake shine.

"We used to clear off the ice and go skating," he said. "But our pond wasn't nearly this big."

"Well, this way we probably won't fall at least." She bent to gather a handful of snow. It was still powdery, sifting through her gloved fingers.

Her aunt told stories about times when the roads had been so bad that only the restaurants directly on the lake were open, because people could walk to them across the ice. It was kind of surreal to stand here, knowing they were supported only by (very) frozen water.

They walked in silence for a few minutes before Jon spoke. "Can I ask you something?"

Startled, Isobel froze for a moment before she nodded.

"You're not angry with me anymore," he said, expression impossible to read. Before she could point out that this was not, in fact, a question, he added, "Why?"

Well, he was bound to notice. "Oh," she said, buying herself time. She had never been very good at explaining herself.

He wasn't demanding an answer; he just stood there, waiting patiently. The sun was rising behind him and the way it glinted off the ice made it hard to look in that direction.

That was a good excuse to look down at her feet instead. "You helped save my life," she said quietly. "Even though you thought what we were doing was stupid."

She chanced a look up at him—he looked a little bit stunned. "You could have just refused to be part of it," she added. "But you came with them."

It took Jon a moment to respond to this. "Of course I did," he said finally.

Isobel shrugged, looking back down at the ice. They should probably start heading back now, before everyone else woke up to find them gone. "Well, thanks," she said. "Kind of hard to hate you after that."

They walked back toward the edge of the lake, almost reaching it before Jon spoke.

"Isobel."

She looked back up at him. "Hm?"

"I'd do it again."


End file.
